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Been With Jesus

 Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.

 

I saw a clip from an interview with R.T. Kendall where he was asked this question, “After 70 years in ministry what would be your advice to a young R.T. Kendall?”  His answer was that though he himself has many degrees he would not recommend to young ministers to go to seminary.  He mentioned Acts 4:13. His recommendation was to do 2 things.  Pray a lot and know your Bible. He said that God wants us to know 2 things, His Word and His ways. He pointed out that how we know His ways or anyone’s ways is to spend time with them.

This is not the first time that Acts 4:13 has jumped out to me. This time I ask myself the question do unbelievers know that I have been with Jesus?  The they that realized in Acts 4:13 wasn’t the church but unbelievers.  We put so much emphasis on training, degrees, gifts, abilities and earthly connections, and they all are good in their place, but it all pales in comparison to having been with Jesus.  

It is so easy to get caught up with good things that we miss out on the God things especially with our time.  It is important for us to invest time with our spouses, our children, family, friends, our business, our career but if we are not investing our most time being with Jesus the rest doesn’t matter.  When we get right down to it if we are not investing the greatest part of our time with Jesus, we are doing a disservice to our spouses, children, family, friends, careers. 

Personally, I have had to make some adjustments this week, to look for those things that easily take my time and distract me.  The biggest one for me was my phone.  I thank God for the day and age we live in where we have access to so much in the palm of our hand but I have allowed to much of it to be a time stealer.  I thought about how many times every day that I go on my phone, really without thinking, and waste time on reading the news, Facebook, sports apps. While I could justify every one of these not being evil in and of themselves, I had to admit to myself that the time I spent with them was time I should be spending with Jesus.  There was also another verse that connected with this Acts 3:6 Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

Peter gave what he had and the man was healed.  How did Peter have it? He had spent time with Jesus.  

 

 

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